Last week, I didn’t have a recap of Episode 2, partly because there really wasn’t much to tell. It’s like Gotham’s episode 2 that focused on Selena Kyle, except Camren Bicondova’s performance kept me from half-assing a write-up of it. But since I do need to offer some sort of review before I can move on to this week’s episode, here are the crib notes.
Episode 2 begins where the season premier left off: the mission to retrieve the 0-8-4, dubbed “the obelisk” has gone tits up, with Agent Hartley (Lucy Lawless) ending up dead, and Agent Lance (Nick Blood) ending up captured by General Talbot (Adrian Pasdar). He offers Lance an exit route: give up Coulson and he walks away with money in his account and a proper burial for his fallen comrade. The new mission is to have Carl Creel, aka: the Absorbing Man taken in before he can harm anyone else, due to absorbing the power of the obelisk, which basically ends up turning people into stone. That’s basically it, as far as the main plot is concerned, and it’s not all that interesting or compelling to be honest. The best, most fun moment I got out of the previous episode was when Coulson and Talbot faced off, and showed off a revamped espionage agency that now has a camouflaged Bus and other aircraft that can disappear at will. The humor that I enjoyed so much about season 1 returned, and I was glad to watch Clark Gregg and his Director Coulson get his dry, semi-snarky humor back.
Whereas Episode 2 was lackluster in the action and plot department, this week’s episode is brimming with twists, engaging subplots and tighter, exciting action scenes. If people were wondering what happened to Agent Jemma Simmons, we get our answer: she’s living in a single apartment, and getting ready for a new day at work; still the bright, energetic scientist we’ve come to love….but now working for Hydra. Sounds like she’s pulled an Agent Ward and turned traitor, right? In actuality, she’s been placed undercover by Director Coulson, in order to figure out what the terrorist network is up to. Through her meddling, it turns out that Hydra’s after Donnie Gill, aka “Blizzard”, a former S.H.I.E.L.D. recruit from season 1. But Hydra seems to be on Simmons’s game, as she is tested by the group to prove her loyalty: help capture Gill before S.H.I.E.L.D. does.
Put simply, the biggest reason why this episode works is because of the plot itself: seeing Elisabeth Henstridge’s Simmons being forced to play in the equivalent of a high-stakes poker game with a mediocre hand and told to bluff is simply thrilling. One wrong move and she’s dead, or worse, brainwashed to become a member of Hydra, as shown at the beginning of the episode with a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent being tortured into joining their side by Daniel Whitehall, aka “Kraken”. Every move she and the espionage agency is crucial, and they cannot risk blowing their cover, and that made for a tense, exciting 45 minutes of television. The way the episode moves reminds me of this year’s Captain America sequel, The Winter Soldier, where the filmmakers took inspirations from political/spy thrillers. “Making Friends and Influencing People” feels much like that, except on a smaller scale, due to the medium. It also highlights why Season 2 is such a huge improvement of Season 1: It’s more confident, more self-assured about what kind of universe they’re in, and how to tell that story of where the group fits in it. Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about Iain De Caestecker’s Fitz, as he plays a vital role in the episode. He gets the idea that Coulson is keeping things from him, and he eventually stumbles onto the area where Agent Ward is being kept prisoner, leading to an emotional confrontation where Fitz shows him just how much pain he went through during the season finale. Caestecker has probably been the most underutilized so far in season 2, but his scenes where he hallucinates and imagines seeing Simmons by his side is nonetheless important o show the effect being deprived of oxygen did to him.
Episode 2 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was an extension of the season 2 premiers; Episode 3 only solidifies why this new season is a significant improvement over the previous season, and why I hope the show continues to find a wider audience in its 9 pm time slot. Also, given that the Episode 4 with Clark Gregg and Ming Na Wen doing a parody of dancing scenes as a way to increase erotic tension between two appealing leads (True Lies, Mr. & Mrs. Smith), it seems that the creators haven’t completely lost the show’s sense of self-awareness or humor, which would be the perfect complement to all the seriousness surrounding this dangerous new world in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.